Maybe you're unclear on exactly what a whistleblower means. Definition (by google): "a person who informs on a person or organization engaged in an illicit activity."
So by definition, you can only whistleblow if the government (or company) is doing ILLEGAL (and often IMMORAL) things. So you may not find many people on HN who are too interested in arguing about the downsides of whisteblowing; it'd almost be like asking what the upsides of spousal abuse are.
Whistleblowing only applies to things that are illegal. Just because you have a personal objection to something doesn't mean you can leak whatever you want.
> A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower)[1] is a person, usually an employee, who exposes information or activity within a private, public, or government organization that is deemed illegal, illicit, unsafe, or a waste, fraud, or abuse of taxpayer funds.
Morality ? lawfullness. Many things are perfectly legal but profoundly immoral or unethical. The public has a right to know that they're being cheated like this, that working class people have to pay their taxes but the very rich don't. It's very slimy that you try to equate this to curiosity about royalty.
Whistleblowing by definition means reporting something that (someone thinks) is unsavory. You can argue whether a given set of whistleblowers are misguided, but otherwise you don't call them whistleblowers.
I'm not sure where I'm ignoring any of that but you seem to be saying that because a country can make laws preventing you from whistleblowing that therefore it's borderline irrelevant whether you're doing something illegal or not in order to whistleblow.
That is far too general of a position than what I'm comfortable with. Seems somewhat anarchist to me.
>You're begging the question by assuming that the activity a whistleblower reports is illegal.
In this particular case, we know that (some of) the activity reported was illegal. The fact that, even with this being known publicly, the "watchdog"'s response is still to explain why the activity is okay is a problem.
What is a whistleblower, exactly? It should be defined before we make these sweeping statements. You could imagine whistleblower protections being abused ...
"Whistleblower" is a term of art: someone who brings a "private" company matter to the attention of the outside world. Usually this would get you fired, so there are legal protections for whistleblowers.
Whistleblowers pointing fingers in the wrong direction. What they're doing is most certainly legal. What should be looked as is the legislation enabling it. Or rather if it's even a bad thing in the first place.
Whistleblowers are a help to the average citizen, yes, but perhaps the parent poster meant "insiders with their own motives", which might not be benevolent.
Yes, sometimes government actions are illegal, but a random individual can't know that unless they A) see a court case actually happen or B) interpret the law themselves and determine that the actions are illegal. Option A doesn't help whistleblowers, since the whole point of whistleblowing is to cause a court case to occur.
The better question is: Are you a whistleblower in a legal sense if what you reveal is legal?
The government doesn't operate on unicorns and happy thoughts, it operates on the law. It's the job of the people to elect representatives such that the law conforms as much as possible to unicorns and happy thoughts.
Can we not group whistleblowing, a usually-legal heroic action of reporting immoral/illegal behavior (to the extent that you can be awarded millions of dollars by the government for whistelblowing) with leaking trivial product details?
Where did this bizzarro alternative definition of "whistleblower" come from? You realize that the US government has had programs for a long time now that specifically pay whistleblowers a percentage of fines received in order to encourage people to eat out illegal behavior. Some of those people have been paid multiple millions.
Now, whistleblowing against the government is always a dicier proposition, but that's certainly not the only definition of whistleblower.
Keep in mind that legal vs illegal is a completely different question than right vs wrong. Whistleblower protections need to extend to cover more than just exposure of illegal activites.
So by definition, you can only whistleblow if the government (or company) is doing ILLEGAL (and often IMMORAL) things. So you may not find many people on HN who are too interested in arguing about the downsides of whisteblowing; it'd almost be like asking what the upsides of spousal abuse are.
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